Poll: Trump has twice the support of Bush in New Hampshire

Donald Trump isn’t just doing well in national polls — he’s also making gains among voters in early primary states.

A new poll finds Trump with twice the support of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, his nearest competitor, among likely Republican presidential primary voters in New Hampshire.

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The survey, taken by the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute in West Long Branch, New Jersey, comes after Trump’s July 18 remark that Arizona Sen. John McCain was “not a war hero” because he was captured.

“The controversy over comments about John McCain’s war service do not appear to have slowed the Trump steamroller,” observed Patrick Murray, the institute’s director.

Trump holds the top position in the Monmouth poll at 24 percent, Jeb Bush comes in second at 12 percent, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker are tied for third at 7 percent.

The poll finds that Trump is taking votes from all GOP candidates, but he’s hurting Walker, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz the most.

If Trump were not in the race, 40 percent of voters surveyed said they would have switched their support to Christie, Walker or Cruz.

About 15 percent of those surveyed said they had met one of the candidates in person — and about half of those said they’d met Christie, who has deemed New Hampshire a must-win state.

“Despite spending much of his time there, Christie does much better as a second choice rather than the first pick in New Hampshire. It seems that Trump has stolen the New Jersey governor’s ‘telling it like it is’ thunder,” said Murray.

The Monmouth University Poll was conducted July 23-26, surveying 467 New Hampshire Republican voters and likely voters leaning Republican, via landline and cellphone. The overall margin of error for the survey is plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.